Silent Enemy (11 page)
Authors: Tom Young
“You must stop this kind of talk,” Gold said. “Your body is injured, but your mind is strong. You will use it to serve your country.”
Mahsoud adjusted the oxygen cannula in his nose, raised himself on one elbow. He seemed unable to find a comfortable position, and he winced when he breathed. He looked outside.
“What is the pilot doing about our situation?” he asked.
Gold hesitated, then decided not to mislead him. There was no way to sugarcoat this set of facts. “The crew has located the bomb. The pilot is trying to get information on how to deal with it.”
“Where is this bomb?” Mahsoud asked, switching to English. His courtesy touched Gold. Whenever he spoke to her, he seemed to use his own language only when he could not express the thought in English.
“In the tail of the airplane.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No, but the flight engineer has.”
Gold worried about how he would take this news, but he did not appear to react at all. Tragic, she thought, that someone so young was so used to death and violence. Mahsoud shifted his eyes from the window to the floor, like he was thinking about something.
“Rest, Mahsoud,” Gold said. “Do you want me to find something for you to read in English?” Maybe someone had a sports magazine or something.
“No, thank you.”
Gold wanted to offer some kind of hope, but there seemed so little reason for it. Still, she tried.
“I know this pilot, Mahsoud. If there is a way out of this, he will find it.”
“How do you know him?”
“Four years ago, I was escorting a Taliban mullah to be interrogated in another country.”
“In Guantánamo Bay?”
“I cannot say. But soon after we took off from Bagram, we were shot down.”
“With this pilot?” Mahsoud asked in Pashto. “And you evaded capture?”
“We did not evade for long. We were captured by a Taliban militia.”
“But they did not behead you, obviously. Allah be praised.”
“Indeed. I have no doubt they would have killed us eventually. American and Afghan soldiers tried to rescue us. They freed Major Parson, but not me.”
“How did you survive?”
“I do not tell this story to everyone, Mahsoud. Please keep it between us.”
“I am honored by your trust, teacher.”
“My captors tortured me, tried to get me to talk. All by himself, Major Parson came for me.”
“Then he must be a formidable warrior.”
“When he needs to be,” Gold said. “But I believe he would rather catch fish and hunt deer.”
“That is to be admired, if he is capable of violence but does not relish it.”
True enough, Gold thought. But she wondered if, in the end, it really mattered who commanded this airplane now. Life itself was a flight whose destination you could not know. She looked outside, and her eyes focused on nothing.
Mahsoud looked out, too. Gold imagined his thoughts were running in the same current as hers.
“We are trapped between heaven and earth,” he said. “For now, we belong to neither.”
8
P
arson let his boots rest lightly on the rudder pedals. He peeled off his flight gloves, stretched his fingers wide, and looked at his hand. He thought it almost odd that his body, though very probably doomed, was still healthy and alive. Like a well-designed machine, to his aviator’s mind. Nerves transmitting signals like electrical wiring. Blood vessels carrying fluid set to a precise temperature. His heart a variable-speed, variable-pressure pump. FMC. Fully mission capable.
arson let his boots rest lightly on the rudder pedals. He peeled off his flight gloves, stretched his fingers wide, and looked at his hand. He thought it almost odd that his body, though very probably doomed, was still healthy and alive. Like a well-designed machine, to his aviator’s mind. Nerves transmitting signals like electrical wiring. Blood vessels carrying fluid set to a precise temperature. His heart a variable-speed, variable-pressure pump. FMC. Fully mission capable.
Corsica lay beyond the left wingtip, surrounded by a rippling blue Mediterranean. Dots of white in the Bay of Calvi, the sails of pleasure boats. Across the airways up ahead, and getting closer by the minute, was Rota Naval Air Station, Spain. Parson already had his approach plates open to the ILS for Runway Two-Eight. He wondered if he’d ever live to intercept that approach course. And if EOD didn’t hurry up and get back to him with some kind of plan, he’d have to figure out a place to enter holding again.
He’d also have to shut down that number four engine before descending. Dunne had found a power setting that kept its vibration within limits, so it was okay for cruise flight. But you couldn’t trust it to handle rpm changes while you jockeyed the throttles during an approach, so this would be a three-engine landing. Technically, an emergency by itself, but it was the least of Parson’s problems.
Before things got busy again, he wanted to speak face-to-face with the MCD. “Your airplane, your radios,” he told Colman. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Got it,” Colman said.
In the cargo compartment, the aeromeds fussed over their patients—an Afghan in particular, a bandage over one eye. A little farther aft, Parson noticed a litter that appeared only as a mound of green blankets, the patient’s face hidden. All monitoring equipment turned off and disconnected.
Parson felt a cold twist in his stomach. He thought he’d made the right decisions with the information he had, but it still hurt to see the consequences right there in front of him. Even if he somehow managed to get this airplane on the ground in one piece, it would mean little to that man’s family.
The MCD turned away from the Afghan with the bandaged eye, stripped off her latex gloves.
“Ma’am,” Parson said, “how are things down here?”
The flight nurse regarded Parson through her glasses, then took them off and let them hang by a beaded silver lanyard around her neck.
“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,” she said. “You have a lot on your shoulders.”
“I appreciate that. So do you.”
The MCD sighed. “These guys need to get to a real hospital.”
“What about that patient you had to restrain?” Parson asked.
“He’s quiet at the moment.” The MCD pointed to a man Flex-Cuffed to a litter. He seemed to be sleeping.
“Lieutenant Colonel,” Parson said, “I guess you realize when we figure out what to do with that bomb, we’re going to have to depressurize again.”
The MCD put her hands on her hips, stared as though she were watching something far outside the airplane.
“Do what you have to do,” she said.
Parson nodded. He looked at the rows of wounded, wondered which of them he’d have to hurt next. Across the cargo bay, Gold sat talking to that Afghan friend of hers. Parson stepped over cables, around Pelican cases, to get to them.
“How is he?” Parson asked.
“I am well, sir,” the man said. It surprised Parson to hear the Afghan answer in English. And he clearly was not well.
“Major Parson,” Gold said, “this is Mahsoud.”
Given the man’s injuries, Parson wasn’t sure whether to shake his hand. So he just said, “Nice to meet you. Sorry about the circumstances, though.”
“A pleasure to make your—” Mahsoud paused.
“Acquaintance,” Gold said.
“Acquaintance,” Mahsoud repeated.
“Your English is coming along,” Parson said.
Mahsoud looked puzzled at that, but he said, “I have a good teacher.” Then he said something in Pashto. All Parson understood was Gold’s name.
“He says if you are my friend, then you are his friend,” Gold said.
“Likewise,” Parson said. He was trying to think of something else appropriate to say to Mahsoud when he heard his own name called.
“Major Parson,” shouted a loadmaster wearing a headset. “Lieutenant Colman says he needs you upstairs, sir.”
Damn, Parson thought, can’t he handle ten minutes of straight and level flight? On autopilot, no less? Maybe he should have spent less time at the Air Force Academy playing with falcons and going to football games and more time learning something useful.
“Talk to you later,” Parson said. He tromped up the ladder, lowered himself into his seat, put on his headset.
“What you got?” Parson asked.
“I think you need to hear this,” Colman said. “There’s a C-17 on the way into Rota. They haven’t been able to find a bomb on board, but they took off from Bagram ahead of us. They’re talking to Rota command post on UHF2.”
Parson pulled up his VOLUME knob for the number two UHF radio.
“Reach Eight-Two Yankee, Matador,” the command post called.
“Go ahead, Matador.”
“Say again your download requirements.”
“Reach Eight-Two Yankee will need a pax bus for thirty-one passengers,” the pilot said. “Also request a K-loader to off-load three pallets.” The voice sounded almost routine.
“And your aircraft status, sir?”
No answer for the moment. Then: “Ah, let’s call it Alpha Three.”
That’s what I’d say, too, Parson thought. Alpha Three, a grounding condition. Even if they land safely, that airplane needs to be inspected nose to tail with a magnifying glass. With dogs and Geiger counters, too, for that matter. It’ll likely involve every organization from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Centers for Disease Control.
“They sound okay so far,” Colman said.
“Have you heard them say their altitude?” Parson asked.
“No, but just before you plugged in your headset, they said they were fifteen minutes out.”
“So they’re descending.”
Parson imagined the scene on the flight deck of that C-17. Both pilots watching the altitude scroll down on their PFDs. Probably holding their breaths at each ten-thousand-foot increment.
“Let’s see what they’re saying to ATC,” Parson said. He checked his approach plate, entered the approach control frequency for Rota.
“Reach Eight-Four Yankee, Rota Approach,” a controller called. “Expect the ILS, Runway Two-Eight.”
“We’ll look for the ILS to Two-Eight,” the pilot acknowledged.
A few moments later, the controller called, “Reach Eight-Four Yankee, fly heading two-four-zero and intercept the localizer. You’re cleared for the ILS to Two-Eight.”
No answer.
“Reach Eight-Four Yankee, fly heading two-four-zero for the localizer.”
Static.
“Reach Eight-Four Yankee, Rota Approach. Radar contact lost. Squawk ident, please.”
Nothing.
“Reach Eight-Four Yankee, do you read?”
Parson looked across the console at Colman, who stared back. The copilot looked shaken. Dunne leaned back in the engineer’s seat, clicked a ballpoint pen, slapped a clipboard down on his table. The sky outside seemed to burn, the richest blue Parson had ever seen.
A call on interphone interrupted the silence in Parson’s headset: “Pilot, MCD.”
“Ma’am?” he said.
“I heard that radio traffic. Let’s just keep this quiet.”
“That’s a good idea,” Parson said. Then he added, “All right, crew, you heard the lieutenant colonel. If you were on headset for what just happened, don’t spread it around. There’s nothing anybody can do about it now, anyway.”
MAHSOUD WAS SLEEPING AGAIN
. Gold took the blanket that covered his good leg and pulled it up farther, across his chest.
. Gold took the blanket that covered his good leg and pulled it up farther, across his chest.
She pondered that news report about how the Taliban said it had infiltrated the police. Such a bitter disappointment to hear the attackers might have had help from the inside, but Gold knew she shouldn’t be surprised. Her literacy classes were part of a larger program to professionalize the National Police. However, she sometimes wondered if the culture of corruption and incompetence was just too pervasive. How much good could a recruit like Mahsoud do if no one else cared? And even if you made some progress, as she thought she had, it was so easy for the enemy to destroy it. The work of years set back by the flip of a switch.
Out the window, sunset smoldered on the horizon. Gold felt the plane turn, and she hoped that meant they were getting close to Rota. Maybe Parson would get some instructions from EOD and this thing would be over. The wings leveled for a while, banked, leveled. The sunset drifted by again. So we’re flying in circles, Gold surmised. Dear God, will this never end?
Mahsoud stirred, opened his eyes. “Hello, Sergeant Major,” he said in English.
“Hello, Mahsoud.”
“You look troubled, teacher.”
“I will be all right.”
“Has your friend, this pilot—” Mahsoud switched to Pashto. “Has your pilot friend let you tour the aircraft?”
“He has.”
“I wish I could see it. I have never flown before.”
What an awful shame he can’t go upstairs, Gold thought. He’d be so fascinated. Mahsoud seemed to be interested in everything.
That gave her an idea. She went to the baggage pallet, found her backpack, took out her digital camera. If she couldn’t bring Mahsoud to the cockpit, she could bring the cockpit to him. A weak gesture, but maybe it would give both of them something to think about, something to put into their minds to dilute the dread. Parson had already said it was all right to take pictures. There was probably not much classified equipment in an airplane this old.
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